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Inside the 1873 Colfax Massacre that saw up to 150 Black men Murdered by Klansmen and former Confederates
Inside the 1873 Colfax Massacre that saw up to 150 Black men Murdered by Klansmen and former Confederates In 1873, the worst episode of racial violence since the Civil War exploded in Louisiana. After a group of Black militiamen trying to defend the results of Louisiana's 1872 gubernatorial election surrendered to angry KKK members and former Confederates surrounding the Colfax courthouse, the white mob shot and hanged as many as 150 of them in cold blood. But many whites still blamed the Black victims for the Colfax Massacre. Some white witnesses even claimed that the bloodshed was the fault of a "mob of armed negroes who began to make open threats to the effect that they would kill all the white men and appropriate the women and girls to fiendish desires." And for generations, many Louisianans believed this racist lie. Now, some historians think that this horrific incident singlehandedly chilled the progress of Reconstruction, showing just how bloodthirsty its oppone